Minimum consumption. Maximum freedom.

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“The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.”

Anne Lamott

In a contemplativa one has time for the big questions and what bigger questions than who, what, where, how and why?

It is a remarkable feat to awaken to the understanding that you are not who or what you think you are. Who or what you’ve been told you are is only a label. A story. An idea! This process is called enlightenment and is a cornerstone of access to deeper wisdom.

Once you’ve turned this corner you will find a rapid accumulation of understanding and knowledge. A sense of knowing and an ability to feel truth from lie.

You may then discover plane truths like you are not where you have been told you are. Yes, you are in the world, but what world? A true global conspiracy! If you quest to discover where you are (as opposed to where you’ve been told you are) start with Zetetic Astronomy free on Google books, but tread carefully friends. The path to this discover is well hidden with powerful information peddlers hell bent on leading you off the garden path so to speak. [There is also another link in this post]

Next comes how which is all just a question of physics and metaphysics. The enlightened one approaches this knowledge from a unique vantage point and with penetrating insight that the unenlightened one stumbles over with only rational intellect as their tools of discovery.

Last, one is left with why. I believe this is the most important question of all. I also believe we will never know the answer to this riddle in our conscious lifetime on this material plane.

Best to not worry about the unknowable. Instead spend time with friends doing that which pleases you. Why may be answered in death, but most likely I suspect there is no why. All is just as it is. There may be no true answer to why.

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One has to realise that many occupations are fundamentally inconsistent with satisfactory living. A marketing or civil engineering consultant working all day to produce products or reports and entertaining potential clients at night is not going to have time for proper recreation (the recreation of oneself), children, family, hobbies or any of the activities that nourish the soul. No attempts at work life balancing is going to overcome the fundamental flaw. To avoid this pitfall life must be designed. Consciously and carefully.

We must concoct a prescription for living and in doing so our labour must become a love rather than the living dead trudge to a barren grey office. We fear the leap toward uncertainty of a self derived economy because we have been taught to fear since childhood. Mostly when we think of business we only consider some scary sized corporation which would certainly drown us if we were plunged in as the crew captain.

Yet business need not be all consuming and megalithic in size. Say you produce and sell handcrafted ale as a hobby. Soon your sales grow out of a Saturday stall at a local farmers market. Then a few more and a few more. Perhaps your living costs are so modest that you can live off the proceeds of a few days of labour per week. You agonize if you should do it full time and chuck in your dreary job in accounts. A business and banking adviser will try to sell you debt pushing and bleating that you must heavily invest in mechanization, distribution, staff, marketing, advertising and grow your company to compete on the world stage with the big boys, but to what end? To be rich? And what if you were rich? Chances are you’d buy your freedom and finally pursue the pleasures you’ve dreamed about. If that is the case why take such a circuitous route?

Skip the whole monster phase. Stop working when you’re expenses are met and start living. In my estimate a simple liver could cut their labour to a modest 1-2 days a week and live comfortably once they rodeo wrangle their expenses into line. I’ve come to think of work as life support and what better way to support life than in a project of importance to you. If you do take the leap into leading a petite business you may find yourself so empowered and inspired that you will want to work more, but maybe you won’t. If you own the company it will be your choice when you knock off and go play.

By reducing liabilities, expenses and bills you reduce the need to work. By doing this as a precursor to business you generate savings. These savings are a buffer from failure and the capital you need to build your own life support vehicle.

There is more to life than work-spend-sleep. A petite little business all your own may be the vessel to help you discover what else you can do with your life besides the boring work of the corporation.

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“Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart”Rumi

A shitty cog in heartless machine. Bored beyond belief due to the annual dumbing down of technical and interesting work. A jumped up wanker as a boss who’s as hollow as a tin drum. Feeling depressed and trapped in an average job in an awful company. Littered with dis-empowering processes, corporate cultural cringe and smiling satanists from human resources eager to tell you that you have been involuntarily separated from the pay roll in a voice that sounds like they are giving kids cotton candy.

How do you feel about work? I mean does this sound familiar? I held lots of jobs and they were all basically the same. We suffer these indignities just for a paycheck. The mighty paycheck that too many people pump into trinkets, babbles and maybe a house.

When I began work I was a fresh faced optimist. I thought work was a mertiocracy. I was going to do well. I didn’t know anything about how it really is with all the bullshit, dipshits and office politics.

Modern work seems to gravitate to a model where there is a nucleus of elite geniuses at the centre. They have licked every arse on their climb to the top and proved beyond any doubt that they have absolutely no personal ethics that will get in the way of making money. None at all. These elites set the strategy and divide the spoils without shouldering much (any?) of the blame when things fail.

Meanwhile the entire rest of the company comes to work everyday thinking that they are an individual. A human with needs, emotions and rights. But, truth is all companies want is reliable (you keep turning up), compliant (you do exactly what you are told with no questions) and low cost labour. Low cost being the paramount consideration.

There are always people that will work for less. Yet they don’t have your skills, your experience, your contacts, your education [add your own irrelevant criteria here]. When people get laid off they can’t figure out why, but its very simple when you understand the critical criteria governing your continued employment. You got fired because you didn’t hit one of the big three. Reliable – you had the audacity to take a few afternoons off with your dying mother or you wanted to go to your kids sport. You weren’t compliant. When management tried to push the company into the next corporate nose dive you spoke up and pointed out a better way to do things. Low cost. You got senior enough that they knew they could demote you and halve your salary after 30 years of long service and you have no choice, but to thank them for keeping you on the roster. Only 5 more years…oh wait 9 more now and you can finally afford to retire….

Working for large companies means shitty living. We were never meant to do it like this. Our lives have been hijacked and our labour is being stolen by invisible plutocrats.

We need to find work that is compatible with the good life. When you find the work of your heart as Rumi put it you will never labour. My rule of thumb is that whatever you launch you must not commit more than 1 year’s savings from your current employment. However little that is. Start small and stay petite. There is always room for the craftsman or craftswoman in a world of mass produced machined garbage.

People will consistently pay a little more for the toil of the craftsperson over that which is made with the oil of the machine.

Launch your petite business. Nurture it around your corporate slave schedule. Learn, grown and become empowered through your achievements. One day that little business may provide a sufficient living for you and those you love and support. The downside is trivial. Just a modest sum of money, a jot of your creativity and a mere iota of your time.

This is your call to action.

The stakes are too high to let fear keep you on the sideline any longer.

Ironically her kids live on cereal and chicken nuggets, chips and tomato sauce and she is worried about frying cabbage? I was joking, but not completely so I don’t think she picked up on the irony in her complaint.

If you give any human the choice between steamed sweet potato and fried potato chips or crisps most will prefer the oily version. If your kids are the same just try serving up some boiled reconstituted chicken gruel (that hasn’t been battered and deep fried before you reheat) with oil free baked fries and see if its the food or the oil that they enjoy.

Oil is incredibly calorie dense and so of course we crave it. 300 Calories is 1 /12 heads of cauliflower which is a lot of food. In oil terms that is a few mls. So its easy to get a lot of calories eating oily foods, but news flash oil is not a health food.

Not even olive or coconut oil. Sorry to burst those bubbles.

You will thrive when you get over oil addiction. What’s more your family will become healthier and richer. There are an awful lot of foods that don’t taste good unless they are fried or roasted in a half cup of oil.

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“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”

Augustine of Hippo

Inevitably you will encounter resistance in living simply. You won’t be living in some commune. You’ll be living in some regular house in some regular neighbourhood, but your home circumstance won’t be very much like your neighbours.

Like you probably won’t have a TV. You might plant cauliflower in your front berm. You might have furniture that you made. You’ll wear efficient but cheap clothing. You won’t have many or any cars. You may walk a lot and generally stay closer to home.

Whatever it may be it will be different than mainstream and as soon as you cross that line in the sand you are up for massive ridicule.

Let’s say I tell you that the world is flat. It’s not a spinning spherical ball like you’ve been told.

Examine your reaction to me – this guy is moron. Everyone knows the world is a globe. If I persisted with this claim you would probably conclude that I am some sort of nut. But, examine my claim and your knowledge on this subject. Like how do you actually know its a ball. Because you were told right. You’ve seen photo’s from space. End of discussion.

You’re so certain you are right that you’d be prepared to take a silly little test and because you are so certain you will obviously fly through and prove me the moron I am. So go here and read the 200 logic points that suggest the earth is flat. Take my challenge and effortlessly refute any 5 of these 200 arguments. Any five will do. Post comments by clicking the speech bubble under the title.

When people encounter different ideas and different ways of being they react according to their programming – they ridicule. The intent of this programming is to homogenize humanity and steer us all away from ever realising our potential as full individuated beings. My mother always told me that a mind is like a parachute – it only works when it is open. In adopting such a foundation view one is more open to new ideas and with that knowledge shifts. Its a collision course for ridicule because you will have ideas that are your own. They are not simply unfiltered propaganda parroted by the autopilot. As soon as you start seeking truth it doesn’t take long to appreciate how many things in our realm are not based in truth. They are deeply repeated and entrenched viewpoints with only superficial supporting evidence.

Unfortunately, the closer you start living to self evident truth the further you are living from community and their norms.

If you can’t find a depth of courage to follow your own ideals you won’t ever succeed with simple living. Don’t worry about the neighbours. Find reasons to be proud of wearing free t-shirts. Smile deeply when the ill educated tease you. Feel proud of your achievements when you are confronted by corporate zombies that try to steal your zest and compel you back into their prison lifestyles. Examine your guilt, shame, fear or discomfort and make what you are doing right with your soul. You can become a very happy and fulfilled person if you have the courage to turn off the highway and carve your own trail.

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“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves”Buddha

To me simple living is not having to think.

You disengage the conscious mind when you design low cost of living, healthy routines and then let the autopilot take care of business. Drop all the complexity and unnecessary steps. Bore down on the essence of things.

This frees one’s mind for the bits of life that really matter.

Forget planning dinner right after lunch. Mentally auditing your recipe ingredients. Planning a trip to the grocery store to pick up all the bits that are missing. Spending 2 hours cooking and an hour cleaning up after.

Instead, begin the process at dinner. Pick what is fresh from your garden. Cook it simply. Steamed or oven baked. Eat it and move on with your evening.

Instead of constantly tiding, organize. Organize and abandon. Keep only items you use or those that give you joy. If the only time you touch it is to dust it…dust bin it.

Your house is a home. Not a warehouse.

Empty rooms. Consolidate your material needs.

Eventually if you end up with empty rooms you outta question if you need a house with 3 empty rooms. The more rooms, the more heating, the more home maintenance, the more cleaning (perhaps 🙂), the more worry, the more of your living wealth tided up in a liability.

Take away choice by creating a routine. Routines become habits and habits good and bad are hard to break.

Wake up in the morning and meditate, write, or run or whatever fulfils you. Instead of lying in bed at night wondering if you will run, or debating with yourself about whether the weather is running weather just relax. In the morning you will run because that is what you do and running is who you are.